I recently wrote about a pupil of mine who passed her test in spite of serious misgivings I had concerning her ability to perform under pressure. It turns out that I was wrong – and I’m more than prepared to admit that.
Normally, I don’t have an issue with my pupils being test ready. It’s quite simple: if they’re ready, they’re ready. I know when that is. End of. However, maybe a handful of pupils in a hundred turn out to be real wild cards, and even though they can do everything required of them some of the time on their lessons, they can’t do it all of the time. The $64,000 question is: does that mean they’re not test ready?
A lot of instructors become far too involved, and the point at which their responsibilities end and the pupil’s begin becomes blurred.
I noticed on a forum recently that someone posted how they’d taken a pupil to test who had previously failed with 3 driver faults and one serious fault. The pupil only took a single lesson due to financial constraints between that test and the next. Apparently, the pupil drove well on that lesson, and on the journey to the test centre. But the ADI concludes that the subsequent fail with 8 driver faults and 3 serious faults meant that the pupil wasn’t ready for the test. I can only go on what is written, but that is absolute nonsense. If they could drive well, they were test ready, and the fail was for other reasons.
There are more factors involved than people seem to realise. To start with, most pupils are far more nervous on their second attempt than on their first (not my fault, I can assure you). Secondly, whenever I’ve sat in, I’m sometimes slightly surprised at what some examiners let go just as I am slightly surprised at what others mark as faults. One pupil of mine recently bay parked with more than three quarters of his wheel in the neighbouring bay, but the examiner said he was “on the line” and let it go. I know that virtually every other examiner would have marked it as a fail (I certainly teach them that any part of the car in the neighbouring bay is chasing down a fail). This sort of thing isn’t common – and I have no issue whatsoever with any of my examiners up this way – but it does illustrate the natural variation in standards adopted by different examiners. So what might be seen as a “good” fail with only a couple of faults by an ADI might not be as good as he or she believes had it been marked slightly more harshly.
Then there is the simple issue of time, and its effect on things. One test might be in light traffic and good weather, whereas the next could be in horrendous conditions – God help a pupil on test who drives within half a mile of a school during the mummy run. In one test, the pupil might be emotionally balanced, and yet come the next attempt they might have family or personal issues on their minds. I remember at least two of my pupils over the years who had been openly threatened with losing their jobs if they didn’t pass, and another whose new “dream job” as an apprentice was conditional upon him passing.
And let’s not forget the Hand of Fate, where the jackass who wasn’t there last time decides to approach a junction at warp speed, to pull out, or to attempt to give priority where he shouldn’t, causing a chain of events that result in the pupil messing up under the pressure. One of mine once failed because she braked hard on a mini roundabout when a taxi cut her up, and then got stuck as every twat to her right started piling out over the roundabout regardless (that could happen to anyone, especially if the car has driving school livery on it). The list could go on indefinitely.
There is no way we can teach pupils for every eventuality. Sure, we can teach them how to deal with someone cutting in because it happens often. But we can’t teach them how to handle an armed police raid on a drugs den (it happened to one of mine on her test a few years ago). We can teach them how to deal with an ambulance coming up behind with its lights and siren going. But we can’t always teach them how to handle four unmarked police cars attempting to break the sound barrier, a 24 hour bus lane, and a dickhead behind who didn’t move over after we did, and then pulled up almost alongside us so that the police cars were held up, thus creating a situation that could only result in panic for a new and inexperienced driver (it happened on a lesson I was conducting two days ago). We can tell them to stay calm until the cows come home, but we can’t stop them being nervous to the point of vomiting if that’s part of their biology (I taught a brother, two sisters, and a cousin where ADHD, suspected Autism, and related traits were clearly inherited all the way down the line on the maternal side; and another where Autism in the son is clearly linked somehow with the diagnosed anxiety issues among the mother and all of her immediate family). And we can teach them how to anticipate what others will do until we’re blue in the face, but if they brake sharply on test because the clown in front decides to turn left or right without indicating and they didn’t realise what he was up to, they’re probably going to fail – even though anyone else, including the examiner, might also have done the same.
I’ve said it before, but the driving test is only the beginning of a lifelong learning curve. The test does not yield perfect drivers – and it has never pretended to do so. ADIs need to start remembering this instead of trying to conduct mock tests in their hi-vis jackets and expecting zero faults all the time.
